SYTYCD Bloggin’

I am wonderfully thrilled that tonight we got to see Mean Mia Michaels. It is so awesome when she forgets she’s on television and just absolutely sticks a knife into a dancer’s back and acts like an insane bitch. Which, if she were critiquing an auditioner in a theatre where there were no cameras, would be perfectly acceptable, but yeeeesh, Mia. Also, I get that you believe contemporary dance is the be-all and end-all of dance, fine, that’s your thing, but I remember your shitty “this is the dance where I imagine myself dancing with my death father” routine, so your shit doesn’t stink, lady.

Chelsie and Mark: salsa and Broadway. I am sick to death of “Broadway”, which on this show means endless Bob Fosse homages. This is not a knock on Mark and Chelsie’s performance, which was fine; I’m just saying. The salsa was excellent. I have nothing else to say here; Mark and Chelsie have been consistently good.

Comfort and Thayne: hip-hop and contemporary. Man, I am really feeling for these two tonight, because they both performed really quite well (the hip-hop was better than the contemporary, but both were quite decent) and then got slagged off by the judges for not “connecting,” which is entirely eye-of-the-beholder (and also code for “we want you off the show now”). Ironically Comfort probably has good odds of making top ten, despite being the weaker half of the duo.

Courtney and Gev: cha-cha-cha and jazz. Snide comments about these two being weaker dancers on the whole than others in the competition, bar Joshua and Katee these two had the strongest night of anybody. The cha-cha-cha was simply fantastic (which is to be expected from Pasha and Anya choreo’ing it; Pasha in particular deserved to make top 4 last season, but sadly was not as pretty as Neil) and the jazz routine was fun, and they really are excellent partners for one another.

Jessica and Will: contemporary and quickstep. Firstly, I have to give props to Will on two fronts: firstly for defending Jessica when Mia pulled out the long knives (sure, he could have been maybe a little more emphatic, but I chalk that up to being blindsided by the comments in question), and secondly for finally doing a routine that justified all the smoke the judges have been blowing up his ass. That Tyce Diorio routine was genuinely one of the best ones ever on this show, and Jessica was every bit as good in it as he was.

The quickstep, however, was horrible crap, almost entirely so, and I have no tolerance for people whining about the kiss of death because there have been tolerable quicksteps on this show and even excellent ones. So my summation of Will is thus: fantastic contemporary dancer, reasonably good hip-hop dancer, terrible-ass ballroom dancer. Hopefully when we get to top ten the blowjob train eases in intensity for Will.

Kherington and Twitch: krump and tango. Twitch absolutely murderered that krump – the only time in the history of this show that I have seen any dancer, period, do a krump justice. Kherington did not do that; her first half was the moderately acceptable watered-down hip-hop that passes for krump most of the time on this show, and her second half was horrible in just about every way. (But Nigel doesn’t mind, because she’s hot.)

The tango was uniformly bad; in fairness, it started off bad by being a bad routine (this was one of Jean-Marc’s bombs, every choreographer has them, it’s all right, he’s still good) and was compounded by Twitch being nervous and Kherington just being genuinely bad. The worst night this couple has had yet; I don’t think they’re in much danger, but a bad night for them, especially Kherington.

Katee and Joshua: waltz and Bollywood. This is the first night that Katee completely outdanced Joshua in both routines, establishing her pretty clearly as the leading girl in the show this season. The waltz was mediocre (Katee was fine, but Joshua was definitely not up to his usual standards and it showed; pity, it was good choreo).

The Bollywood, on the other hand, was absolutely insane; I don’t know much about Bollywood dance but I know people who do know it, and their opinon universally is “holy shit, did they nail that.” The knee-spins were the only part which came off as laboured and those are insanely difficult to do anyway; Katee and Joshua absolutely danced this with the energy and athleticism Bollywood routines demand. Just fantastic.

Bottom three couples: Jessica and Will, Comfort and Thayne, Kherington and Twitch.
Going home: Jessica and Thayne.

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